Yaya Touré risked ridicule this week by venting his anger at Manchester City for not adequetly acknowledging his birthday. But he’s not the only footballer who has used a strange excuse when it comes to demanding a move

Yaya Touré has put his future at Manchester City in doubt. Photograph: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images

Yaya Touré’s apparent dissatisfaction with the lack of appreciation and love shown to him by his employers on the occasion of his 31st birthday has been the source of much surprise and amusement in the past 24 hours. Forced to make do with a cake without candles, a celebratory tweet from Manchester City’s official website and two separate renditions of Happy Birthday from his team-mates, the midfielder and his agent have hinted this otherwise outrageous snub could trigger a move to pastures new, preferably one where Yaya will be rewarded with a Bugatti for the heroic feat of becoming one year older. But if nothing else, Touré can at least console himself with his weekly stipend of £240,000 and the knowledge that other players can be even more demanding and have angled for moves elsewhere on grounds that are equally spurious.

Robbie Savage

In late 2004, Birmingham City and Wales midfielder Robbie Savage fancied a move to Blackburn Rovers, who had just been taken over by his friend and compatriot Mark Hughes. Although Steve Bruce, then the manager of Birmingham, wanted to keep him at St Andrews, Savage later admitted in his autobiography that “I sat in his office and told him things about my private life that were not all true”, even going so far as to turn on the waterworks “with help from the onion I had in my pocket”. Savage claimed the main reason he was agitating for a move to Blackburn was a desire to be closer to his parents home in Wrexham and eventually got his way. A quick visit to the AA Route Planner reveals Blackburn’s ground to be four miles further away from Wrexham than than that of Birmingham City.

Gilles de Bilde

A dog-lover, De Bilde was had previously been accused of smuggling his two dobermans into the UK without having them go through quarantine when he signed for Sheffield Wednesday from PSV Eindhoven in 1999. With Wednesday having been relegated from the Premier League at the end of his first season with them, the Belgian striker demanded a loan move to a Premier League club and his manager Paul Jewell duly obliged.

“I fixed him up with three months on loan at Aston Villa,” said Jewell. “But when I called him in to tell him, he said: ‘I’ve got a problem. I’ve got nobody to look after my dogs if I go there’. I said, ‘Give us your house keys, I’ll feed the bloody dogs’. That was the sort of thing I was up against.”

De Bilde failed to score in four subsequent appearances for Villa and a few years later was disciplined by Belgian side Willebroek Meerhoof for skipping a game to mourn the passing of one of his pets.

David Unsworth

In 1998, West Ham defender Unsworth submitted a transfer request on the grounds that his wife, Jane, was having difficulty adapting to life in London after moving from the family home on Merseyside. Aston Villa and his former club Everton both bid for Unsworth, who raised eyebrows by choosing the Midlands club. Less than a month after moving to Villa, Mrs Unsworth is believed to have decided she wasn’t too keen on Birmingham either and her husband told his new manager, John Gregory, that signing for Villa had been a mistake and he wanted to move to Everton instead. Unsworth did exactly that, citing a lengthy commute as his main reason for wanting to leave. Gregory sent the player back to Merseyside to mull things over, where after a period of introspection he inked a deal with Everton. For their troubles, Villa recouped the £3m they’d paid West Ham.

Hristo Stoichkov

After five successful years at CSKA Sofia, Stoichkov was being courted by Barcelona and it was rumoured the famously short-tempered midfielder agreed to move to Camp Nou subject to one demand being met: he wanted a sports car and it had to be red. “Yes, correct,” he told Sid Lowe in Fear and Loathing in La Liga. “Red. Only red. I wanted a red car. I signed for that. Audi. I had a licence, but only Bulgarian so I couldn’t drive it. But the first thing was: ‘red car’.” Some years later, another famously short-tempered footballing genius, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, pulled a similar stunt with Juventus, although his demands were rather more extravagant. As a condition of signing for Juventus, who are owned by Fiat, he demanded one of only 399 Ferrari Enzos to roll off the production line. Juve officials baulked at their prospective employee’s impertinence, but Zlatan stood his ground and they eventually delivered.

Francesco Totti

A one-club legend who has represented Roma for 21 years, Totti has never handed in a transfer request on the very sensible grounds that his in no way stereotypical Italian mother, Fiorella, promised to cut off his “whatever” if he so much as contemplated playing for any other club. It’s probably fair to say the prospect of such a fate is more terrifying than that of facing any number of birthdays without handshakes, Bugattis or cake.